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That’s the number one question on pretty much every massage therapist’s mind.

There are dozens and dozens of ways to get new clients. The problem is to choosing the most effective strategies, that is the strategies that get new clients in your door without costing you a ridiculous amount of money or time.

I’ve been a big proponent of the “Give to Get” strategy for ages because it’s super simple and has dramatically transformed the lives of so many BodyworkBiz subscribers over the years. If you want a refresher or aren’t familiar with the concept, attend my free World Massage Conference webinar “60 Clients in 60 Days” on Tuesday, March 24th at 9pm ET. On that broadcast I’ll also tell you how you can get the “60 Clients in 60 Days” book for only 99 cents. (Yes, it’s taken longer than I expected. Sorry about that.)

Is there anything else that works? Traditional advertising is pretty much dead, but some types on online advertising, like Facebook ads, can be extremely effective. You can take a look at this case study as an example.

There are a lot of great things about advertising on Facebook. A couple in particular:

It’s “Pay per Click” advertising. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, so you are really only paying for results.

You can target who the ad is seen by with incredible granularity. For example, I could run a ad that is only seen by married female runners between the ages of 25 and 50 who live within a 5 mile radius of my clinic.

It’s easy to do. You basically fill in a four-step form to create your ad.

How do you do it? I’ve created videos about this that are available for the people that have purchased the Retirement Sale package, but these were just an overview.

For some easy to understand, but comprehensive tutorials, check out this course:

This course is free. No catches. You don’t even have to sign up or give up your email address. It involves about four hours of video training, so I would suggest you set aside two full mornings and go through the entire course. As you watch the videos, open up your Facebook account and set up a couple test ads for yourself.

I would suggest you set up a page on your website with a special offer (this is called a landing page) that you send people to from your ad. Run an ad for a week. Keep your ad spend low: Maybe $20 to $50 total. Then track your results to determine your return on investment. For example, let’s assume that your average client purchases $500 of massage over their buying lifetime with you. If you spend $50 and get one new client then your return on investment is 10:1 ($500:$50). That 1000% return on investment.

Facebook is rolling out changes to Facebook Pages. The layout of your business page will change automatically on June 17th. If you log in now you should be able to preview the new layout and make any changes you want to make before the update happens.

See the image below for the most significant changes or click the image to view these changes on the BodyworkBiz Page…

As much as I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook, it can be effective. Two weeks ago I mentioned in a BodyworkBiz blog post that Facebook can no longer be considered a “free” way to promote your business.

I also said that you shouldn’t give up on it because it can provide some of the most effective paid advertising that you can do.

As proof, check this out: I ran what’s called a “Promoted Post” for World Massage Conference for five days…

To sum up the results:

Over 100,000 therapists saw the Post

1,458 people Liked the Post

524 people Shared it with their friends without any promotion or incentives!

And this was just for five days!

Moreover, we had a huge audience for the broadcast, maxed out our chat room and of course, lots of massage therapists took advantage of our special pre-launch offer for the 2014 conference.

I’ve been using paid ads on Facebook for years and they do work. I’ll tell you more about using these for your practice in future Marketing Tips newsletters and give you specific how to’s. So keep your eyes on your inbox over the coming weeks.

Do you want to see that presentation?

The “Introduction to Kinesiology Taping” presentation was superb. It’s one of the new video presentations that I shot specifically for World Massage Conference.

Normally, replays of these Encore presentations are only available for paid conference participants, but we decided to make this available for everyone at no cost… but just for the day. It will come off the site on Thursday morning when I get back to my desk to launch the 2014 conference site.

Use your email and password to log in. Or in the odd event that you do not have a World Massage Conference account you can set up a free account here so you can watch this special presentation.

Once logged in, click the “Broadcast Room” button at the top of the page to watch the “Introduction to Kinesiology Taping” presentation featuring Drew Freedman.

While you’re on the site…

Be sure to sign up for the 2014 conference today. You’ll only see links to purchase once you’re logged in. All the details are inside, but I can assure you now that you’ll never get better value for your massage education. (Watch this video for more details.) You get some of the best education in the world at a price that anyone can afford. It only makes sense to sign up and it’s one of the reasons the World Massage Conference has been the largest event in the history of massage for seven years in a row. Imitators can say they’re the best, but massage therapists like you have clearly shown which event they prefer by making World Massage Conference their yearly destination. So login now to register for 2014.

Facebook announced this week that they will be rolling out changes to Facebook business Pages. Sometimes I wish the Internet would just stop changing for one week. It would be nice not to have to keep redoing the way we do business on a daily basis.

These changes probably don’t effect massage therapists too much, but it’s good to be aware of what’s happening.

In short…

1. The double column layout changes to a single column. And a small column to the left will contain the About Us information as well as links to photos and videos.

What that means for you? Not much. You can no longer highlight a Post by spreading it across two columns. Overall, the Timeline will likely be easier to read.

2. The business name and category now appear on the Cover image and the Profile image moves up slightly.

What that means for you? You may have to redo your Cover image to accommodate those encroaching elements.

3. The Custom App boxes (those four little boxes under the Cover image) will be gone. Custom Apps will move under the “More” button in navigation.

What that means for you? This is probably the most significant change if you make use of this functionality. It is relatively easy to draw visitors’ attention to these as they currently exist and with the changes they will disappear from view. This means you’ll definitely need to advertise if you want anyone to view your custom app.

4. Administrative features are more prominent and include the addition of a “Pages to Watch” function that allows you to monitor competitors.

What if means for you? Likely not much.

Here are what the changes will look like with the new Page layout…

You have to pay…

Facebook made it very clear earlier this year that your business Page will almost never show up in users’ News Feeds unless you pay to have it show up. With the removal of the custom apps from the viistor’s view, Facebook continues to push businesses towards paying for anything useful.

Should you give up on Facebook?

The short answer: No.

With a gazillion users (approximately) Facebook can still be beneficial for building your practice. But the old Facebook for business is no more. You have to see Facebook largely as an advertising medium.

There are some alternative ways to use Facebook that are likely more effective if you are a sole practitioner with a private practice. I’ve talked about these somewhat unconventional strategies in the past, but with the recent Page changes these alternatives may be even more attractive. Subscribe the the BodyworkBiz newsletter and I’ll review those approaches with you in the coming months.

If you are a big Twitter user you know what hashtags are. The are a keyword that is proceeded by a number or pound sign, ex. #spa, #massagetherapy, #whatever. On Twitter they look like this…

Using a hashtag is kind of like using the index in a book. You look up the word in the index and it gives you references to all the places its used in the book.

When you click on a hashtag or use it in the search box in Twitter and now Facebook, you get a list of posts that have used that tag.

Companies were very excited about Facebook introducing the feature because it would allow users to find their posts in a completely new way.

How much of an impact have the tags had in Facebook and should you start using them consistently?

The short answer: No.

Rather than helping engagement with Facebook users, a recent study strongly indicates that it does exactly the opposite. Using hashtags on Facebook actually harms your business more than it helps.

Using hashtags in Twitter is another story. It does significantly increase the number of retweets. However the bigger question when it comes to Twitter is does Twitter help you get more massage clients. I haven’t had anyone give me any proof of this, so until I see even a handful of therapists showing me some evidence to the contrary I’d have to say that Twitter is not a useful client generation tool.

The hashtag findings are just another example of something I point out all the time. Oftentimes what the things we think work, really don’t. Many massage business experts are well meaning, but they often teach what they think works and not what actually works in the real world.

I am a big proponent of testing and tracking. You’ll see this reflected in the courses I offer all the time. I don’t like testing and analytics, but the numbers don’t lie. So I share the results of my tests as well as those of other therapists who are kind enough to share with me, so you can spend your time doing more fun things, like massage. I’ll take some time to share some examples of counter intuitive marketing advice throughout this month. If you are not subscribed to this blog or the massage marketing tips newsletter, sign up now for notifications.

Some massage therapists have set up a Page for their business on Facebook, but have chosen the wrong type of Page. Ideally, if you have a physical location you want your Page to be a “Local Business” Page. This gives you special functionality on your Page that is specific to a “brick and mortar” business (as opposed to a Brands or Products).

You can see what kind of Page you have by going to your business Page and clicking the Edit Page link at the top of the page and then clicking Edit Settings.

Then go to the Page Info tab and look at the Category. It should say “Local Business”. BodyworkBiz is not a local business because there is no physical location, so you won’t see that label on my BodyworkBiz Facebook Page:

If your category is not “Local Business”, simply click the Edit link to the right and choose the proper Page Category from the drop down menu and save your changes.

Then be sure to fill out all the possible fields that Facebook gives you for your local business page. This will help visitors find the information they are looking for when they go to the About tab on your Page: Things like prices, parking, hours, directions, etc.

If you read about marketing at all you’ve no doubt heard about the “sales funnel”. The concept is basically this: You move people through a sales process. You create lots of awareness by spending money and time in advertising and PR. A certain number of people become interested, some of those people make an effort to explore their options, and eventually a few will become clients. So as people go through the funnel the numbers narrow until a few customers drip out the end.

The dream of social media is that you don’t have to blast your message to get the word out. You tell a few people and they tell a few people and so on and so on until you have this huge number of engaged interested buyers. This doesn’t require a lot of money, but it’s extremely time consuming. This social media funnel is supposed to look like this:

It all good in theory, but the reality is that this is a bit of a social media unicorn. There is as much noise in social media as there is in advertising, so your message largely gets lost. And people don’t engage in social media with an eye to buying stuff. That’s not their intent. They are engaged in SOCIAL media to be social. They are not going to “advertise” for you. So the real social media sales funnel looks like this:

Yes, there will be people who “engage” with you: people who comment, share and like. But those actions have a very limited lifespan and the effect quickly peters out. What typically happens, and you have probably experienced this yourself, is that you do a lot of work encouraging interaction and don’t get many (if any) clients for your efforts.

I’m not saying that social media is useless. There are ways to maximize your use of social media, but you really need to be committed to doing it and doing it right. And you need to invest more than a little time in the process. Facebook is slowly removing the free benefits and pushing toward paid models for businesses, so you do need to make some financial investment as well.

Having a presence in social media is important, but it’s not all important. If you are not interested in going all out, my suggestion is to establish a presence and spend just a little time each week (20 minutes) and a little money to stay active in people’s minds.

Here’s a free guide to help you figure out the most essential things you can do on Facebook:

Use the 80/20 rule and have the most impact possible for the least amount of time. The guide is free and I’ll host a webinar soon to further expand on these concepts. Be sure to sign up for the BodyworkBiz Massage Marketing Tips newsletter to get the announcement of this upcoming webinar.

With over a billion people on Facebook you know it’s important for your business. But if you may not be interested in learning everything there is to know about Facebook. And even if you did you likely don’t have hours of free time every day to be using it, especially when the payoff for your time seems so uncertain.

This no-nonsense guide will lead you through six things you must absolutely do to set up your Facebook Page and will outline a simple Facebook marketing strategy that you can do in only 20 minutes a week or less.

You may be the kind of person that uses social media in a very quiet way. You’re content to use one or two networks to keep in contact with your friends and family.

However, it’s important to establish a professional presence on social networks as well. People live on these networks. Not only do they socialize, but they use these networks to research products and services, to solicit opinions and reviews and to buy stuff.

If you’re not using social media for your massage business then you are missing out on a terrific opportunity to connect with people and get more clients under your hands.

I don’t believe you have to spend a lot of time on social media sites like Facebook to be effective and over the next couple weeks I’ll share some simple, quick, easy to implement social media tips with you in this blog, on the BodyworkBiz Facebook Page and in the BodyworkBiz newsletter.

Let’s get started with tip number one…

Tip 1: Create Profiles on Major Social Media Sites

Even if you are not active on social media sites, it’s extremely valuable to have a complete profile set up. Why? Because people will be looking for you and your business on these sites and they expect to find you. If they can’t find you easily, then they’ll look for someone else.

I would suggest at the very minimum setting up complete profiles on each of the following social media sites:

Today Facebook unveiled more changes to the site. This time it’s the News Feed. That’s the page you land on when you first log in that contains Posts from your Friends and Pages you follow.

Facebook doesn’t say exactly how the changes are going to impact business Pages, but at first glance it’s not good. Users will have the ability to choose more specifically what they want to see in their News Feed and will be able to filter any Page Posts out of their feed.

It seems as though businesses will have to be more engaging, use more visually interesting content and post more frequently to be seen. Once again, Facebook is forcing business users to move to paid advertising to get seen on the site.

If you’ve been following this blog you know I’ve never been a big fan of Facebook. Maintaining some presence on Facebook is important, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify and significant investment of your time on Facebook. Paid advertising options have become the most cost-effective way of leveraging this social media giant.

Facebook sending your visitors to competitors?

In related news I recently stumbled across another change on a Friend’s business Page. This seems to have received little attention, but could be devastating to your Facebook Page. Facebook may just be testing this in a limited way at this point because it does not appear on all Pages.

If this rolls out, when someone visits your Page they will be shown a strip of suggested Pages that are related to yours. It looks like this:

So essentially you as a business owner work your petutie off or pay for advertising to get your Page found and Facebook invites your visitor to check out other Pages of possible interest. Some of these could even be Pages of competing businesses as you can see from the screen shot above! You do the work to get the visitor on your Page so they can visit your competitors Page. I can only shake my head in disbelief.